


The Quantum Jump

by Leshaya



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), M/M, PWP, Sad with a Happy Ending, Top Tony Stark, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:22:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leshaya/pseuds/Leshaya
Summary: Steve always liked to hear Tony talk science. He liked it even too much.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 89
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	The Quantum Jump

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FestiveFerret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret/gifts).
  * A translation of [Квантовый переход](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18339203) by [Mister_Key](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Key/pseuds/Mister_Key), [Raznoglazaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raznoglazaya/pseuds/Raznoglazaya), [Visenna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Visenna/pseuds/Visenna). 



> **Authors’ Note:** This is not a physics textbook and there is no McGuffin device in this text. We had something different in mind, oh yes.  
> This fic was written for the Russian Stony Bingo festival, the task was the quote from the “Avengers: Age of Ultron” movie.  
>  _Thor, pointing at Tony Stark, “Besides this one, there's nothing that can't be explained.”_
> 
> **Translator's Note:** This fic was translated as my MTH 2019 fill. Festive Ferret, I'm so sorry that it took me so long, but I hope you will like it no matter what! [The original story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18339203) of wonderful Russian authors Mister_Key, Raznoglazaya, and Visenna deserves all the love in the world. Please give them your kudos!  
> Also, many thanks to my Russian beta [Fatalit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fatalit/profile) and my anonymous English beta.

“...then we’ll overcome the time-travel paradox and make adjustments to the continuum of events, and we won’t even need Strange’s help! How do you like it? Cap? Hey, Cap, are you still there?”

It was a complete disaster. Why had he never experienced such stunning effect neither from Erskin’s lectures nor from Howard’s presentations? Steve thought that he had outgrown it, gotten rid of silly and inappropriate reactions to Tony Stark excitedly speaking science. It happened for the first time in the helicarrier, when Tony was talking about astrophysics with Bruce, slightly but obviously showing off. The damn costume grew tight in the groin, and Steve thanked his lucky stars that he was sitting at the desk and not standing at attention. It hadn’t helped much then, and didn’t help much later, when Tony was sleepily muttering formulas and intricate theorems, falling asleep after a rough day, or when he was spouting off his ideas, sticking with Bruce in the lab, or when he was trying to explain some of them to the Avengers — which was the worst part.

Surprisingly, Steve still has never been caught. Even after the monstrous alien ship crashed down on the compound’s lawn, smoking and falling apart, and Tony stepped out of it, talking the same way as always…

Steve couldn’t remember for the life of him what he had said that very first second. It seemed it was something stupid, like “but how?”, or “where have you been?”, or even “for the love of God, Tony, did you finally forgive me?”.

Frankly, they all were not in their right minds then. Even Tony said just that, “In fact, it was no sweat. The most difficult thing was to lose all hope, and then it dawned upon me. There was something missing in the theory of relativity, so I completed it, and after that, it was easy as a pie. I just needed to calculate all fluctuation points of the space-time continuum and…”

Somewhere at that point Steve switched off. All his blood moved south anyway. After all, he had lost hope and motivation, too. He found solace only in helping others who needed his sheer strength. He cleared away the debris, extinguished fires, pulled apart wrecked cars, searched for lonely elders and children in empty houses. They all slept for two or three hours a day. Every night Steve fell into a black, unconscious swamp and every morning he swam to the surface, gasping for breath. A sharp-toothed longing watched him from a bedroom corner, waiting for the right moment to bite him in the neck, but he somehow managed to keep its rotten teeth away. And when Tony came back, literally fallen from the sky, Steve woke up. It seemed that his body had awakened too and demanded he tend to its needs resolutely and irrevocably.

“I’m here,” he answered, focusing on coming to his senses. He hardly remembered that he was in the conference room and there were people all around. “What’s the catch? When someone promises to fix it all, there is always a catch.”

“Well, really! I have been talking for half an hour, trying to explain why there is no catch in this case, at all,” Tony rolled his eyes but started to explain once again. He spoke like a patient teacher explaining a lesson to kids in elementary school. “We can use a gap in the time-space continuum… you remember that time and space are the same thing, don’t you?.. to blink to the past for a short time and create a loop. A loop is bad, it causes time-travel paradoxes, for example, we can meet ourselves. As for me, I would think of what to say to myself, and I guess that you too, but such meetings are fraught with troublesome consequences to the extent that our reality might be destroyed, so we won’t do it. Instead, we will stay away from ourselves and use a wonderful device that I found on that damn ship and upgraded a little. It’s not the Eye of Agamotto, but it’s similar to it, and it definitely works, or else I wouldn’t be here. Am I making myself more clear now?”

Steve nodded, and the feeling of being hit with a ton of bricks intensified. When Tony said the magic words “time-space continuum”, Steve’s mind tried to switch off and give room to cheeky instincts. If he were to be completely honest, to one specific instinct.

“A loop is bad, but we’ll create it to turn the device on. And what should it do?”

Tony sighed and said slowly, “It should make a quantum channel for teleportation. If we manage to take over the Infinity Stones before Thanos does, we will make their quantum copies in our present. We will transmit quantum-entangled particles in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation, because if we put them in the Bell state…”

Steve couldn’t help groaning.

“I know, it’s risky,” Tony nodded. “But there is no other way, I’m sure as only a physicist can be sure, and since I know the difference between Bohr and boron, and between Thor and a torus…”

“What’s up?” Thor barged in, towering over Tony’s table. “By the way, Tony, what did you do to Benatar? It looks like you hit it with a hammer.”

“Maybe I had to do it a couple of times,” Tony chuckled. “When the engine core refused to produce quasi-neutrino and the navigation rods gave me trouble since they were overheating…”

Steve came. He just couldn’t help it.

His jeans soaked through with hot sperm. A telltale blush crept up his cheeks, his palms sweated, and a short satisfying relaxation gave place to cold fear. If someone noticed… If Tony… What would he think? Steve lowered his head and took several deep breaths, and then he suddenly realized that there was only Tony and him left in the room.

“Cap, what’s going on with you? Do you have a fever or what? It would be at the wrong time, you know. We have to resurrect half of the Universe, and you’re going to take a sick leave?”

“Where are the others?” Steve forced himself to speak.

“You do have a fever. We’ve just agreed to continue tomorrow. Thor is going to cook a festive dinner and grill something for us. I hope he won’t be fined for poaching. Do fines for poaching still exist?”

Steve screwed up his eyes and slowly stood up. Just about now…

Tony stopped mid-word and stared at the wet spot on his jeans. Smothering shame choked Steve for a moment and then vanished because the thirst in Tony’s eyes was extremely obvious. Tony licked his lips and said hoarsely, “You know, I have an idea. Before tomorrow’s meeting I should explain the theory of quantum jumps to you one-on-one. I’d better do it in the bedroom. In private. Right now.”

Steve nodded, took Tony by the hand and boldly marched out of the conference room.

In the bedroom they stood still for a moment just to look at each other with new eyes. They were familiar and unknown at the same time.

“I had no idea that physics inspires you so much,” Tony said at last. He lost the biggest part of his usual sarcasm somewhere.

“I don’t think that’s the point,” Steve argued half-heartedly and stepped to him, thinking that time for talking was over. It seemed that Tony thought the same, as his hard, hot hands locked together on the nape of Steve’s neck, tugging him closer. Tony’s mouth was delightfully hot and alive too, holy God, Steve had feared that he would never hear Tony’s breathing again. He forbade himself to think about it, but he still did.

What little air remained between them heated up quickly. Steve pushed it into Tony, who was panting heavily and trying stubbornly to return every boiling sigh. Steve felt his hands stroking his back and waist — and then pressing hard on the small of his back…

He let out a moan, and Tony caught it with his lips too, but this time he claimed the kiss without giving back. It was so right and long-awaited that Steve wanted to cry for joy. So many years, so many times they orbited each other, fighting over every little matter just because they couldn’t walk by, and now they were finally together, together for real…

And because of that Steve wanted to shout, turn cartwheels, explode with burning sparkles like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. But he managed just to groan.

“Okay, okay,” Tony understood him in his own way, groped his ass firmer and let go immediately to get rid of his buckle. “You will get all of it right now, I promise.”

His fingers slipped further, got into his briefs, still wet from the recent impromptu orgasm, and tightened on his cock. Steve groaned again, making sounds he didn’t know he’d been capable of producing. Such hungry, greedy, pleading sounds. Tony had little rough calluses on his hands, and every time they caressed the sensitive head and the swollen shaft, it gave Steve a full-body shiver. There was only one thing he wanted.

“Just… don’t stop,” he gasped and once again locked lips with Tony. Then he kissed his stubbled chin, his neck… Steve lingered on the neck to leave some quickly darkening marks, enjoying the sensation of a hurriedly beating pulse. “Oooh…”

Tony cursed under his breath and stepped back for a moment. Dread flooded Steve, but it turned out that Tony just needed to undress. After that Tony pressed even closer to him, skin to skin, and all dread disappeared right then and there, melting like an ice cube in a fire. Tony’s prominent Adam’s apple, his firm collarbones with a soft hollow between them, the scars sprawling over his chest (Steve caressed them with his lips, barely touching), the fast tap dance of the heart (it echoed in Steve himself) — all this was for real. Steve tried and failed to believe it once and for all.

As Steve was passionately licking Tony’s dark nipples, Tony ran his fingers through Steve’s blond hair and pulled, making him stop, as if he felt those doubts somehow. He said hoarsely, “Let’s lie down. I’m weak in the knees.”

It was sound advice, so Steve nodded, stripped off the rest of his clothes, met Tony’s wild stare and turned around slowly. He showed off and felt like dying because it seemed that Tony was touching him everywhere just by looking, and they both were falling into a hot dark abyss.

That abyss became even wider when Tony laid beside him and snuggled up with all his body. Hard, warm, restless hands slid all around, touching Steve’s hips, his tensed abdomen, and his once again fully erected cock. After a little pause, Tony touched him even lower, lifted his heavy balls, tickled the entrance and muttered, “If you don’t want it, just say it aloud, and we’ll think of something else.”

Steve shook his head, grabbed the nearest pillow and tucked it under himself. He opened up in front of Tony, who took a bottle of lube from somewhere, and all became fuzzy. Another touch made him groan and bite his lip, as a shamefully deep but sweet caress made him spread his knees.

“Please!”

Tony was already kneeling between his legs. His darkened straight cock bobbed heavily under a line of black pubic hair, a drop of lubricant glistened on the tight latex — when did Tony pull it on? Steve couldn’t stand thinking about it — about anything at all — so he grasped himself under his knees to spread himself completely. Through the sound of his beating pulse he heard a ragged sigh and momentarily felt a pang of sharp pain.

“Oh… my… goshhh… Steve, let me in… it will be easier soon…”

Tony was right, the pain receded as fast as it appeared, giving way to a wonderful feeling of fullness. He was completely open, taken without fighting, stretched, filled to the last extent, and that untasted happiness he had felt earlier became bigger with every push, every movement. Through heavy lashes he saw Tony’s face rocking above him, with his lip clenched between his teeth and with his eyes half-closed in bliss. He heard short soft sighs. He felt hard fingers squeezing his thighs, leaving marks, creating a completely new person out of his old annoying form. All that had stood between Tony and him, all that had seemed so solid and insurmountable before was now burning in a scorching flame. Steve moaned and cried but didn’t hear his own cries; at last, flame rolled over him in such a crushing wave that he was blinded and burned, stripped of all the dirt, all losses and bad memories, all that had tortured and bothered him. And then the flame retracted, leaving a new and different Steve behind. Maybe, leaving a better Steve than he had been.

He even managed to pull Tony closer and feel his damp prickly cheek against his shoulder — was it tears? It couldn’t be. After, Steve laid motionless, living through those priceless intimate moments for the first time. At last, Tony stirred and murmured, sending goosebumps all over Steve’s damp skin, “The damn quantum jump. Do you know what it is?”

Steve shook his head. He was short for words, but he had no doubt that Tony could talk for the both of them.

“There are energy levels,” Tone whispered. His fingers slowly drew something like the Solar system or a rough model of the shield: concentric circles and a steady point in the center. “If you are trapped on one level, you need help to jump to another. An energy dose, another particle, whatever, do you understand? Blink — and you appear somewhere else, even if you thought that this was impossible.”

Steve nodded: he began to understand. Even why Tony had cried too. Steve wasn’t the only one who had taken their sudden intimacy much more seriously than just sex (even the most delightful sex). Tony had something to lose too; he had bridges due to be burned, he had his past that pulled him back and kept from flying ahead. From flying with him, Steve. If they manage to come back and make things right…

“Promise me,” Steve whispered, “that we won’t forget… this? That we’ll stay together? Because I want it, Tony, I want it so much, you can’t even imagine. I’m not perfect, just like you, but we… deserve it, right? We deserve each other.”

Tony huffed softly in his shoulder, “That’s for sure, Steve. Don’t worry. Once you’ve made a quantum jump, it’s almost impossible to turn the clock back. Do you remember what I said about time loops and quantum-entangled particles?”

Steve pressed his hand to Tony’s mouth and stared into his surprised eyes as Tony still tried to talk.

“Please,” Steve asked, “just say yes or no. My mind switches off when I hear something about correlations and quantum jumps. And when you are near me too.”

Tony didn’t say a word. He just kissed Steve in the middle of his palm, and that kiss was better and more final than anything Steve had experienced in his life. It was like a final drop into a tincture ready to crystallize. In just one moment an obscure liquid transformed into a whole world full of phantom wildwood, wonderful towers, and bridges, and there was no way back.

And no one needed it.

Of course, they were late for the festive dinner. Tony offered to forget it completely, but Steve protested because in that case Thor or Romanoff would come to fetch them, and heaven knew what would be worse.

“Everybody will know right now why we are late. They will tell stupid jokes,” Tony grumbled, putting on his t-shirt. Hickeys on his neck stood out in a beautiful leopard pattern, and Steve’s artistic flair begged to leave another two to complete the composition.

“Only Clint, maybe. Others won’t risk it or will pretend that they are considerate enough not to pay attention,” Steve chuckled. He has already come to his senses, and now he was appreciating the world anew, getting to learn it from scratch. “Except that they will pay attention.”

And yet he pulled Tony closer and planted a kiss on his neck.

“What are you..?” Tony began grumpily, but grasped something just in time and stopped.

“Sorry. I needed to balance them.” Steve honestly tried to say it apologetically, but failed. “Before we go… You know, it seems it’s dangerous to complete my to-do list. There is “Star Trek” there, and from what I know the characters talk science while they are not adventuring.”

“It’s true, but I don’t think that this is about science as it is,” Tony chuckled. “This is about me, isn’t it?”

There was a short pause, and then Steve smiled widely and admitted, “It was always about you. Remember, Thor once said that there was nothing that could not be explained, apart from you? He was right after all.”

“You are a flatterer,” Tony smiled despite his words. “There are some other unexplainable things, and we definitely should talk about them.”

“In the evening”, Steve nodded. “Right in bed. To avoid useless running.”


End file.
